Every football fan who has lasted more than five seconds knows who Bill Belichick is.
To many, myself included, he is the GOAT: the greatest coach of all time. The stats back it up. He has eight Super Bowl rings, six of which came from his head coaching tenure with the New England Patriots during their two-decade-long dynasty. (The other two came from his tenure as the defensive coordinator of the New York Giants.) A descendant of the Bill Parcells coaching tree (ironically, another head coach in the GOAT conversation), Belichick was head coach of the Patriots for 24 seasons, winning 17 division titles in the AFC East and making 13 trips to the AFC Championship.
I already mentioned his six championship rings as a head coach, but he has been to the sport’s greatest stage a total of nine times as a head coach.
When Belichick stepped down as head coach at the end of the 2023 season, his overall record was 266-121, with a 30-12 record in the playoffs. To put that in perspective, Mike Holovak, the second-most winningest head coach in Patriots history, had 53 career wins. Between 1961 and 1968.
But the end of Belichick’s coaching career was rather anti-climactic for someone with as much football clout as he has. He retired after the 2023 season and became an analyst for ESPN. Despite his newfound role, rumors circulated that Belichick would make an attempt to return to coaching, especially after the Chicago Bears fired head coach Matt Eberflus and the New York Jets fired head coach Robert Saleh.
But then things took quite the Tar Heel twist.
For those unfamiliar with his game, Mack Brown is one of the greatest college football coaches of all time. He is eighth all time in FBS programs with 288 victories, and is the only coach to have at least 100 wins with multiple programs. He has 113 wins with the North Carolina Tar Heels and 158 with the Texas Longhorns; those 158 wins in Austin make Brown the second-winningest coach in program history, and he led the team to its fourth championship in 2005.
Brown also coached UNC in separate stints, between 1988 and 1997, and again from 2019 to 2024. But at the time of his firing, Brown was the oldest head coach in college football, and his age-related disconnect from his players combined with UNC’s rivalry loss to the NC State Wolfpack on November 30th sealed his fate.
But UNC seemed to be a believer in the definition of insanity (that is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results). They hired Bill Belichick, the greatest NFL head coach of all time, to lead a college football team. The Tar Heels fired the oldest head coach in college football, and replaced him with a man who is now the new oldest head coach in college football. This seems like a move straight out of left field, one that will backfire immensely, but it actually is a genius move.
Belichick has nothing left to prove. He’s already established himself as the greatest head coach in NFL history, and it’s clear through his career that he genuinely enjoys coaching. He’s hinted that he wants to return to coaching and that he also does not like the current state of the NFL (although to be fair, who does). His solution, take a contract with $10 million a year to coach in college. His first three years are guaranteed, and he has another $3.5 million in incentives, so there really is no downside.
One of the biggest challenges in today’s college football scene is recruiting, and many have doubts about how a 72-year old Bill Belichick is going to recruit. It’s simple: make sure he doesn’t change his name. The legendary status his name carries is immense, especially considering the vast majority of D1 football players have the NFL as their goal. Belichick is already a proven winner at the most challenging level of the sport of football, and could easily make the Tar Heels an ACC contender in year one, as UNC still finished this year 6-6 under Mack Brown.
Bill Belichick took the UNC job not for the paycheck or the clout. Contrary to what some keyboard warriors say, he isn’t even taking the job for ghits and shiggles. He is taking the job because he genuinely loves and thoroughly enjoys coaching football. While he’d like to coach in the pros once again, his discontent for the NFL at the moment makes college his best option. Coaching is key in any sport, but especially football. Andy Reid plays just as much of a crucial role in the current Chiefs dynasty as Patrick Mahomes or Taylor’s boyf—sorry, I meant Travis Kelce. Belichick was just as important in the Patriots dynasty as Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski or Julian Edelman.
It is because of Belichick’s genuine passion for the game that UNC will likely reemerge as a top dog in the ACC, and Belichick’s coaching prowess could easily start a new era of college football, not just in coaching, but across the entire sport in general.